"Asantehene lies in state", says the Ghanaian Times in a front page story. The story is accompanied by a picture of Otumfuo Opoku Ware II, the late Asantehene, riding in a palanquin and resplendent in gold and donning a rich kente cloth. The story says the President Flt-Lt Jerry John Rawlings, will be the first to pay his last respect today to the late Asantehene, Otumfuo Opoku Ware II. Otumfuo's body will lie in state at the executive lodge of the Manhyia Palace until Thursday March 25. According to the paper, the president will be followed by paramount chiefs of Ashanti and the Kumasi Traditional Council. Next will be members of Parliament, who will also pay their last respects. There will be general wake-keeping throughout the night, with church choirs and traditional drumming and dancing in attendance. Men are expected to be in traditional black mourning cloth "kuntunkuni" while women wear "dansinkran and "kaba" The Times says billboards and banners have been mounted at vantage points of the Kumasi metropolis, including the Manhyia Palace, expressing condolences to Asanteman.

In another front page story headlined: "Okyeman announces Kuntunkununku's death", theTimes reports that the large crowd of chiefs, queenmothers, politicians and well-wishers, who filled the Great Hall and corridors of the Ofori Panin Fie (the Palace of the Okyehene) at Kyebi in the Eastern Region at the weekend, could not hold back their tears when it was officially announced that the Okyehene, OsagyefoKuntunkununku II, was dead. OsabarimaKena Ampaw, Adontenhene and acting president of Akyem Abuakwa Tradditional Council, is reported to have announced the death The paper says the Adontehene then provided six cartons of schnapps and six rams for the performance of the necessary rites. Libation was poured on a shrine at the forecourt of the palaceand two of the rams were slaughtered amid the chanting of war songs by the Asafo Company. Osagyefo Kuntunkununku is reported to have suddenly taken ill and was taken to the 37 Military Hspital in Accra last Tuesday evening. He is said to have been pronounced dead at dawn the following day, by the doctors at the hospital.